by Amanda Crowl, editor in chief

It was ugly. It was outdated. But that’s the way one hall used to be after a recent upgrade.

While the Panther Hallway received a makeover, the downstairs entrance hallway was left in disrepair.

With the wallpaper torn down and no further progress, it looked as if a glue storm had struck. After much consideration, a painter was hired to make the school’s entrance have a sharper appearance.

“It was ugly,” said Steve Staats of Staats Painting and Custom Murals, who designed the accent artwork in the Panther Hallway and the gym that was completed last year.

Before the wallpaper was torn down in spring of 2019, the hallway looked “outdated” and like “a hospital,” according to Assistant Principal Kylene Koper. After the wallpaper was torn down, the walls were left with glue residue. The hallway remained that way for almost two years.

“It really came down to when the project first started,” Koper said. “We had a lot of hands on deck to try and help, but with the amount of work that needed to be done, we lost a lot of support and help. Part of it, too, was giving back to Steve Staats.”

Continuing his visual work at Saegertown, Staats was hired to fix and paint the hallway for $2,500. It took Staats about a week to complete this phase of the project.

The process included hand sanding all the grit off the walls to make it somewhat smooth, Staats said. He then primed them and filled all of the big holes with a spackling compound.

“I watered down my spackle, poured it in my tray, took a regular roller and rolled it on the walls, and I skim coated everything, top to bottom,” he said.

That was followed by another coat of primer and then spackle because “it [spackle] acts like a sponge and it won’t show up,” Staats said.

Additional artwork will be added to the hallway in the future. As the project progresses, The Panther Press will provide updates.

Koper hopes this project will add some Panther pride.

“It was something we could try to do to freshen it up a little bit and get the kids to have more pride in the building,” Koper said.

For Staats, the project is personal as his sons are Saegertown students.

“We are in a really nice place, nice town, and to me it didn’t represent our school very well,” Staats said. “I wanted to do my part to make it pretty.”